In this first video, you'll learn about InDesign's basic layout features while building your flyer's structure.
Locate a striking image for your flyer from among thousands of high quality Adobe Stock images—right from within InDesign's CC Libraries panel. Place a preview image to test your design before licensing it from Adobe Stock.
Add a strong headline, then apply a color borrowed from the image, or from a library containing graphic elements provided by your creative team.
InDesign gives you an easy way to get started on a project; just choose one of the preset sizes from the Start screen. I’m creating a flyer to US Letter size, so I’ll choose that option.
InDesign generates a new blank document, ready for me to start creating my flyer.
The black line represents the edge of the page; the magenta line actually goes all the way around, and represents the margin setting of one-half inch. The purple vertical lines are the column guides. In InDesign, unlike Word, the margin is just a visual guide, not a container; you can place text or graphics outside the margin.
By default, InDesign uses the pica measurement system, which is commonly used in newspaper and magazine production. But if you’re more comfortable working in inches, put your cursor in the small box where the rulers intersect. Then, right-click and choose Inches from the context menu.
InDesign is a container-based program; text lives in text frames, and graphics and photos live in graphics frames. To make a frame for an image, I’ll choose the Rectangle Frame tool (the one with the “X” through it), then click and drag to create a frame that snaps to the margin and column guides.
There are thousands of images available on Adobe Stock, so it’s a great place to find a compelling image for the flyer.
I’ll open my Creative Cloud Libraries panel by going to Window > CC Libraries. At the top, I can choose to search for images within Adobe Stock. I’ll type “succulent retro wood,” and see what I can find. I can expand my search by clicking “See more results on the Web.”
Right on the image thumbnail, I can choose to purchase the image, or download a low-resolution preview to work with.
Until my boss approves the design, I’ll just work with the low-res preview image.
To place the image into the frame, I just drag it from the CC Library panel, then click my mouse inside the frame. If I want to reposition it, I can just click inside the frame and drag the image.
The little Cloud icon at the top left of the frame indicates that this image came from my CC library.
By the way, the image may look a bit pixelated; that’s just because it’s a low-resolution placeholder. If I buy the full-resolution image, that will print perfectly.
I’d like to add some color to my design; a colleague has shared a library with me, and I can choose colors from that. Sharing a library is a great way to ensure a consistent color theme across multiple documents.
To add a headline, I just select the Type tool and click and drag to create a text frame.
I need to use the font specified in the company’s style guidelines, League Gothic. I’ll get that font from the Typekit Library, which is part of my Creative Cloud For Teams membership.
When I sync the font, it’s downloaded to my computer and automatically activated so it’s available to all my applications—not just InDesign!
Now I’ll select the headline text, apply the new font, and, in the Control panel, I’ll change the size to 72 points.
I’d like the headline text to spread out a bit, so—also in the Control panel— I’ll change the Tracking setting to 25; I think that makes the headline more readable. Tracking is spacing between letters.
You’ve seen how easy it is to get started creating an eye-catching flyer, using InDesign’s great built-in features. In Part Two, I’ll show you how to import and format text, how to turn a company logo into a hyperlink, and how to publish the finished flyer to a PDF and the Adobe Publish Online service.
Import text, then create, edit, and save paragraph and character styles so you can easily format all the text in your document.
Add assets from a CC Library so common graphic elements such as your company's logo and corporate color themes are always at your fingertips.
Finally, prepare your flyer for output: Add a hyperlink and save it as a PDF for print and email. Then, publish a digital version of the flyer online. With a single click, share the URL on social networks and email, or embed it on your company blog or website so your customers can view your eye-catching flyer in a web browser on any device.
I want to add some text describing our one-day shipping offer. I could type the text, but my colleague has provided it in a text file.
I just choose File > Place, navigate to the text file on my hard drive, thenclick and drag to create a frame.
InDesign can also import Word files, and you can copy text from anothersource, such as an email, and paste it into an existing text frame.
I could just manually format all of this text, but our design team will createa series of flyers, so I’ll create paragraph and character styles that we canuse in multiple documents. STYLES are just recipes for text formatting, andthey’re very easy to create.
The company style guide specifies the Open Sans font, which I’ve already synced from Typekit.
I’ll make this text Open Sans, and set the size to 14 points.
To store these attributes in a Paragraph style, all I have to do is open the Paragraph styles panel from the Window menu, click the little “new style”button at the bottom, and there’s my new style.When I double-click the style name to change it, that also tags the text withthat style.
Our Style Guide says to avoid hyphenation, so I’ll choose that option in the dialog to turn it off.
Notice the option to store the style in my CC library, which makes it so easy to use in other documents. I can share the library with my team, as well, by choosing Share Link from the library panel menu.
Now, I’ll select ALL the text and apply that style—see how much time that saves?
While paragraph styles affect entire paragraphs, Character styles are just used for bits of text. I want readers to notice the free shipping code. I could just manually format the text but, again, I’ll create a style so my team and I can quickly apply it in other documents.
I’ll just select the code, make it bold italic, and use the nice muted green in the CC Library.
Then, in the Character Styles panel, I just click the New Style icon, then rename the newly created style.
What’s so cool about a style? If I were to change the character color to orange, that change is applied to any text tagged with the style. Think how handy that would be in a longer document!
Because we use the company logo in all of our materials, my creative team has added it to the shared CC library for easy access. I just drag it onto the page. It’s displayed as a low-res image to speed performance, but I can rightclick and choose high-quality display to view it at full resolution.
I’m going to create a digital version of this flyer, so, to make it easy for readers to jump to the company website, I’ll make the logo a hyperlink.
I just choose Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks, and add a new hyperlink for masongardensupply.com. When users click anywhere on the logo and address block, they’ll go to the company website.
The dashed border around the artwork doesn’t appear in the exported PDF: it just indicates that this is a hyperlink.
To generate an interactive PDF, I just choose File > Export, and selec tAdobe PDF (Interactive).
I can also make the flyer available to anyone using a simple Web browser, by using Adobe Publish Online. I just click the Publish Online button and follow the prompts.
All our customers can read the flyer in a browser on any device, and I can even choose an option to allow them to download the flyer as a PDF, so I have the best of both worlds, with just one click!
In these videos, you’ve seen how easy it is to design and publish an attractive flyer for your business using Adobe InDesign.
